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Gareth, our Hon. Secretary who was strongly instrumental in preventing our closure in 2012, has had to stand down from his post because of ill-health. We wish him well at this difficult time.

Because of this, the QES urgently needs a new Hon. Secretary. Please contact the chairman, Peter Barker, on 0781 0791757 if you can help.

The Queen's English Society is neither a museum nor a preservation society.

These are but two of the myths promulgated by our detractors. The 'anti brigade' seemingly have no knowledge of why the QES exists and what we seek to do. They appear to think that we believe that anyone can simply freeze the language at a given time and leave it in that state indefinitely.

The QES is by nature a prescriptivist organisation, because to adopt a wholly descriptivist approach would render our existence meaningless. Put very simply, we refuse as a nation to adopt the word 'sidewalk' when there is already a perfectly good word — pavement — nicely settled in our language.

The QES recognises and asserts the differences between conversational English, radio or TV broadcasting, formal speech-making, formal writing, casual or light hearted writing, and other registers of the language such as messages between experts using specialised terms. It insists on standards appropriate to each register: for example, it is not normally appropriate to use a minority dialect in a message intended for all Britain or the world. In short, there are many Englishes, but it is important to use the right one.

The QES focuses on the more formal registers, where we are more prescriptive.